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Life-work balance and overwork were the reasons cited most by NYPD officers looking to leave the department who responded to a recent survey. Above, officers at an October 2023 demonstration by supporters of Palestine.
The NYPD, already facing recruitment challenges following record numbers of departures in recent years, could be stretched even thinner in coming years.
According to results of a recently completed academic survey, 22.8 percent of rank-and-file NYPD cops who responded are “actively” planning either to leave the department for another law enforcement agency or to quit policing altogether. Should the survey’s results bear out in the next few years, the NYPD’s uniformed headcount could fall to record lows.
Work-life balance, cited by nearly 44 percent of responding officers, and overwork, indicated by nearly 46 percent, were the reasons most often cited by cops who said they intended to leave. Respondents also cited an inability to get time off as among the reasons for their dissatisfaction.
Pay, indicated by 28.4 percent of respondents, and retirement benefits, cited by nearly 19 percent, were specified by significantly fewer cops intending to leave as among the foremost reasons for their discontent. The final sample totaled 1,823 complete responses.
The survey’s lead author, Kenneth M. Quick, an assistant professor of criminal justice at DeSales University and a retired NYPD officer, said both the survey’s findings and what he’s hearing from former colleagues indicates that city cops are being overworked. “From what I understand right now, it's to a point where everybody is basically getting forced to work more than they want,” Quick said during a phone interview last week. “To a large extent, the work-life balance is not there for them.”
Police overtime has spiked in recent years, more than doubling the department’s budgeted amount during the last three fiscal years. Which according to the survey results could exacerbate the rate of departures from the department.
“As the police work force contracts, it is essential for agencies to resist the impulse to temporarily address staffing shortages by overworking the remaining officers,” Quick and his co-author, Kevin T. Wolff, an assistant professor of criminal justice at John Jay College of Criminal Justice, note in their conclusion. The NYPD and other police organizations should limit forced overtime, including by allowing officers to trade overtime shifts by modifying work schedules.
Quick and Wolff suggested that officer turnover could be reduced by increased compensation. But the survey’s results unequivocally point to work-life balance as among the overriding factors for dissatisfaction.
‘Cops are frustrated’
The NYPD declined to make a police official available to parse the survey’s findings. A department spokesperson instead forwarded a similar statement has relied on for months when the department is asked to comment about officer attrition.
“The NYPD regularly monitors attrition and plans accordingly to address the loss of officers who retire or leave the Department for a variety of reasons. While recent events outside of the department continue to present challenges to recruitment efforts we continue to focus on the positive results that happen when someone joins this organization,” the statement said.
The Police Benevolent Association’s president, Patrick Hendry, echoed the authors’ conclusions. “This study confirms once again that the NYPD’s staffing crisis has become a vicious cycle. Cops are frustrated, burned out and leaving in droves, which only makes the workload more unsustainable for the cops who remain,” Hendry said in a statement.
He said the union is telling the department “to stop squeezing our members for excessive mandatory overtime” and the need to hire more cops. “To do that, we need leaders in Albany and City Hall to help us with incentives and competitive benefits that will allow the NYPD to both recruit and retain the finest,” he said.
Following spikes in officer attrition beginning in 2021, departures eased through the first half of this year but remained above pre-pandemic averages.
Through June, 1,514 officers had retired or resigned, according to the Police Pension Fund. Although those numbers mean that just 2.5 percent fewer cops left the department in the first six months compared to a year earlier, resignations declined 25 percent compared to the same period last year.
Nearly 3,000 officers left the department last year — 1,992 by retiring and 939 by quitting, according to figures from the pension fund. Those 2,931 departures were 21 percent less than the 3,701 cops who left in 2022, 1,955 by retiring and 1,746 through resignations. That number of resignations was the highest since the 1,390 officers who left in 2002 before their 20-year career anniversaries.
According to pension fund figures, more than 14,000 officers have left the department since the start of 2020. But the NYPD has hired fewer than 11,000 since then, according to figures compiled by the PBA.
The NYPD spokesperson said that so far this year, the department has hired 2,634 recruits, and that the department’s uniformed headcount stands at 34,167, slightly more than 2023’s headcount of 34,106 and just under the 34,368 in 2022.
The survey measured officers’ overall job satisfaction, including through their answers about their pay, their quality of work-life balance and fulfillment with regard to promotion opportunities and coworker relationships. It also queried officers about workplace cleanliness, how they are treated by supervisors and their perceived risk about getting in trouble following interactions with the public.
The survey sought to ascertain the mindsets of officers below the rank of captain, of which there were some 32,800 in June 2023, when the authors sent emails to nearly 26,000 officers.
Just over one-third of respondents, 36.3 percent, had between 15 and 19 years of service with the NYPD. Nearly 30 percent were sergeants or lieutenants, with the majority officers or detectives.
Quick and Wolff said it is unclear whether the results are typical for the NYPD or how they might compare with other agencies “because there is no established standard for acceptable levels of turnover intention in policing.”
The surveys’ findings are “concerning,” the authors said, noting that turnover rates in the private sector is 10 percent and, given job security and incentivized retirement benefits, even lower in the public sector. The study concluded, unsurprisingly, that job satisfaction, pay and benefits and fulfillment indicate a greater level of commitment to the job. But culling forced overtime is imperative.
“Officers must have adequate off-duty time to stem the ‘mass exodus’ from the profession — public safety depends on it,” they noted.
With regard to work-life balance, Quick said, “the thing that's really alarming about that is that as more officers leave, the traditional response for police agencies to deal with staffing shortages is to increase the amount of overtime, which you increase the amount of overtime and then you further reduce the quality of life, work-life balance for those who remain, which means more are going to leave, so it creates this vicious cycle that's really untenable in the long run.”
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